As you know by reading this blog, or knowing us, we love a good Art Museum; and while there are many, many Art Galleries around Ubud; the goal of the gallery (typically) is to sell art, while a museum displays it. We cannot buy any as we could not take it with us, or have anywhere to store it if they shipped it back home as we are transient on this adventure. On the map we saw there was an Art Museum, so had hopes for being able to look at some Balinese art without having to buy anything.
We arrived at the Rudana Art Museum and Gallery via taxi on another hot day. The museum was located at the end of a long driveway, with a few buildings on the complex grounds. There was an open air cafe where we purchased our tickets (which included a cold bottle of water, much needed). The largest building was the museum itself.
The museum was on three floors, and packed full of art from around Bali from the last 150 years. A lot of it was from the past 50 years, and there were many different paintings, wood carvings, sculptures and puppets (puppetry is very popular in Indonesia).
There was so much art in this beautiful building, including the stained glass windows.
One artist had his own gallery, named Srihardi Soedharsono (born in 1931), one of the most famous Indonesian painters. This quote from his bio stood out, “By concentrating into his brush the power of rasa (feeling), Srihadi has managed to become one of the greatest living colorists, one who can imbue a single surface with an infinite continuum of subtle hues of the same color.” Here are examples:
On the lower level is the gallery, and there was one artist who really caught our eye, Ida Bagus Indra. Painting in a similar style to Srihardi, here are a few we really liked, the blue/black one especially caught our eye.
Once outside, we looked through the gallery buildings, of which there was much Indonesian art available for purchase. As we are traveling, sadly, we could not take any with us, but there were a lot of great paintings. The grounds around the buildings were also very green and peaceful.
After we were done looking, Jessica wanted an iced coffee (which was needed on this still very hot day), so we drank it under the cool cover of the large, open air pavilion across from the museum. As we were relaxing, a car pulled up and a sharp dressed gentleman stepped out, and asked if he could sit with us, which of course we said yes.
After talking for a bit, we learned this was Rudana, the owner of the museum! He was so kind and we talked for a while about art and the museum and learned he had been a senator in the Indonesian Congress and was a true ambassador of the arts; he even shared pastries with us that he had picked up from his daughter’s bakery.
We learned he lived in Sanur, and told us it was a good place to visit. Since we had to alter our travel plans to visit immigration in Denpasar (Denpasar is right next to Sanur) we decided to stay in Sanur instead while we waited to visit immigration to renew our Visas. We even took a picture together in front of the museum before heading on our way. It was a really cool experience and one we won’t soon forget.
We walked back to our hotel, although it was quite hot, down side streets as opposed to the busy main thoroughfares, and saw a few places where artists were doing wood carvings and stone cuttings, and even some street art.
…past a cool temple, too.
When we saw the large statue in the center of the road, we knew we were close to our homestay.
We stopped for dinner on our street, before calling it a night. We stayed an extra night in Ubud as we awaited our Immigration appointment, and updated our plans to stay in in Sanur a couple days to ensure we could get our Visa renewal. Stay tuned for the next update from Sanur, so come on back!
Phil's WayPastCool 